


The Eyes Have It

by MsThunderFrost



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale's Bookshop, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Eyes, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Oblivious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Pining Crowley (Good Omens), Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Romantic Fluff, Snakes, The Ineffable Plan (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-23 02:27:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19141717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsThunderFrost/pseuds/MsThunderFrost
Summary: In which Aziraphale has been hopelessly in love with Crowley for six millenia, and it takes the almost-Apocalypse for him to realize it.AKAAziraphalereallylikes Crowley's eyes.





	The Eyes Have It

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I took some liberties with the Garden of Eden scene. I think Crowley sheltering Aziraphale fits the mood of the fic better, and it is a decidedly Crowley thing to do.

They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul...maybe that is why almost every demon that Aziraphale's come across in almost six millenia have had eyes that were black.

But Crowley's eyes...once upon a time, they'd been a glorious golden-amber, the colour of the first sunrise of creation. They'd been beautiful, just as Crowley himself had been--was  _still_  --beautiful, just as everything that the Almighty created was beautiful, and perfect, and  _good_. Until it wasn't. Until the rebellion that had angels--his brothers and sisters, his _friends_ \--cascading from the heavens like shooting stars, plummeting into pits of fire and sulfur buried deep in the very bowels of the earth. Uriel, in their eerily detached voice, had informed the remaining legions of angels that Lucifer and his followers had chosen the side of Evil, with a captial 'e', and anyone else who dained question the ineffable plan would meet a similar fate. Not surprisingly, no-one stepped forward, although a few exchanged nervous glances.

When they'd met again, a handful of months later (measuring the passage of time was still a rather new concept to the angel, considering that time had rather little meaning for a nigh-immortal being such as himself) in the Garden of Eden, he'd expected Crowley to look... _different_. And he did... _somewhat_. His hair was a smidge longer, for one. And he was dressed entirely in black, which the angel had to admit  _was_ rather slimming. 

The most drastic difference, however, had been his eyes. 

They bulged from his skull, the yellowish-green of the iris encompassed the entirety of the sclera and the pupil elongated into one thin, dark slit. 

They were rather... _alarming_ the first time that one laid eyes on them. Eyes aside, there was nothing particularly  _demonic_ about Crowley. Even if he was the one to tempt Eve into eating the forbidden fruit, he'd never intended for them to be  _banished_. The Almighty was known to have a flair for the dramatic, but this--along with the laundry list of  _additional_ punishments he'd heaped upon them as Aziraphale had threw them (read: marched uncomfortably close behind them, the flames from his sword singeing their hair, as he gently nudged them out of the front gate) out of Eden--was just excessive. And Aziraphale, though he'd never be so daft as to admit it aloud, agreed. It was the reason he'd surrendered his flaming sword to Adam, asking nothing more than that they 'take care'. 

It had terrified him that a creature who was supposed to be  _Evil_ , with a capital 'e', could be so bloody  _reasonable_ , even  _gentlemanly_. Really, how many demons do you see holding an angel beneath the shelter of their wings during the first thunderstorm in all of creation? He supposed that the point was rather moot if you didn't stumble across many demons in your day-to-day, or were not there for the first thunderstorm in all of creation...but the sentiment remained. Crowley's wing had moved of its own accord, the thick, dark feathers absorbing the heavy rain drops that fell from the bluish-black clouds that hung abovehead. He paid no mind to the rain that was slicking his own red-brown curls to his head, his clothes clinging to him like a second skin...

Aziraphale did not realize he was staring, mouth slightly agape, until Crowley smirked, "See something you like, angel?" He blinked those big, yellow eyes at him slowly, the corners of his mouth slowly falling as the poor tongue-tied angel found himself at a loss for words. "The eyes are a bit much, yeah? I think they make me look a bit less... _soulless_ , but they freak some people out."

"They're beautiful." Aziraphale blurted, only to turn a brilliant shade of crimson when he realized what it was he'd actually said. The demon was entirely unfazed--if nothing else, he was enjoying watching his new companion make a fool of himself. "I mean...I haven't encountered many demons before, but generally their eyes are, well...like two giant black holes in the middle of their face. And it's nice that yours are, well,  _not_."

"I wouldn't go so far as to call them beautiful." Crowley said. He'd seen the abominations the other fallen angels had become, their faces cracked and blistered and covered in boils that oozed yellow-white pus and blood that was more black than red. Their eyes, black as that first night before the Almighty had called forth the light, suited their new demonic visage. "But they suit me. So I think that I'll keep them this way...at least for now."

Aziraphale swallowed hard, his tongue suddenly feeling much too large for his mouth. "You should."

Crowley raised an eyebrow, "Didn't I just say that I was going to?" He tilted his head back, flinching a little when one of the raindrops landed a bit too close to his eye. "So this is a thunderstorm...I must say, I'm not a fan." He said, grimacing. Another roll of thunder cackled above them.

"I don't know. I think it's rather... _cleansing_." Aziraphale said, before the two of them dissolved into a comfortable silence. 

It didn't take him long to realize that, while the Almighty might not have thought Crowley to be a particularly good angel, he made an even worse demon. In Noah's day, he was busy saving unicorns-- _unicorns_ , of all things. He'd filled seats for Shakespeare, even if he found the content of his non-comedic plays absolutely dreadful. During the French Revolution, he'd saved Aziraphale's neck from the guillotine, and in the midst of World War II, he'd hopped through a bloody  _church_ to keep Aziraphale's body decidedly bullet-free--he'd had to drop a bomb on a church to do it, sure, but that was rather small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. Even if the latest method the humans had devised to kill one another could, at most, temporarily discorporate him (which, while painful, was only really a minor inconvenience), it was the thought that counted. 

And Aziraphale...well, he thought about Crowley quite a bit. Quite an unhealthy amount, really, for an angel with a rather understandable fear of falling to think about one who was already damned. Or, more accurately, his eyes. 

Once the initial shock had worn off, he found that he rather...well,  _liked_ them. So it bothered him that, as humanity continued to progress forward, discovering new and marvelous things about the world around them, developing tools to advance their societies, Crowley began to hide them. Though Aziraphale was wont to criticize the Almighty's handiwork--after all, everything that the Almighty created was pure and perfect and  _good_ , and while humans, who were in possession of a marvellous little trinket called 'free will', had been gifted the power to choose between  _good_ and  _bad_ , making one wrong choice did not make them  _Evil_ , with a capital 'e'--he found that, as humans became more enlightened, they also became more closed-minded. And seeing a man with eyes like a snake was a bit  _too_ weird, even for Crowley's crowd.

But the change didn't  _start_ with the glasses. It began with his name--first from Crawly to Crowley (which at times sounded so much alike that Aziraphale wasn't quite sure why shifting a few letters around made such a terrific difference), then adopting the rather impressive Anthony  _J._ Crowley (of which he'd assured Aziraphale on numerous occasions that the 'J' did not actually mean anything, it just  _looked_ nice). He'd never actually heard  _anyone_ call Crowley by his supposed first name, but that was neither here nor there. What  _truly_ mattered was that sometime in the early 1600s, around the time Crowley first began contemplating cutting his hair (yet another travesty--but that was a story for another time), he began to wear his now iconic shades. 

Aziraphale was familiar with the human emotion 'disappointment', but had never given much thought to what it felt like to experience it until Crowley's eyes were completely obscured behind the large, dark lenses of his shades. "Those are new." He said. Crowley's brows knitted together in confusion, so Aziraphale tapped alongside his eye. "The spectacles, I mean. You didn't have them when we last met in -,"

"Oh, yes, yes. The shades are new. Was tempting a priest in Munich...the bugger took one look at my eyes and wet himself before he up and fainted. Cracked his head on the way down." He inclined his head toward the heavens, "I imagine he's up there, partying with your lot right about now." Adjusting his shades, he continued, "Figured it's rather counterintuitive, scaring them so bad they up and croak before I can get my hands on their soul."

"So you're hiding." Aziraphale said. He tensed, not having meant for it to sound so judgemental, but Crowley only laughed. 

"Turns out, when humans stop living for hundreds of years, the world around them becomes a much scarier place." He shrugged, "Nobody would've thought twice about a man who could shift into a snake at will during Noah's days, you know? They'd just say I was possessed by demons and give me a wide berth." He snorted at the thought.

Aziraphale was slightly less impressed, "Or you would have been stoned to death."

"Temporarily discorporated, angel. A few rocks can't hurt me."

Aziraphale was silent for a long while, before blurting out, "When it's just the two of us, you don't have to...I mean, I believe I've told you before that I am rather  _fond_ of your eyes. So when it's just the two of us, please...don't feel like you have to hide who you really are."

Crowley smirked, "You speak as if we're old friends, Aziraphale."

The angel knew that his heart did not necessarily have to be beating inside of his chest, but he rather thought it added a touch of authenticity to the whole 'human' getup. Now, it was beating with the ferocity of a runaway train upon the tracks--an angel and a demon as  _friends_? How utterly preposterous! "How about acquaintences tied in a mutually beneficial arrangement?" 

Crowley was just flat-out laughing at him now, "Do all acquaintences tell eachother that they have beautiful eyes?"

Aziraphale flushed, "You remember that?"

"Darling, how could I forget?"

Crowley continued to hide well into the twentieth century. After having spent something like twenty years stewing over Crowley's request for holy water, they saw quite a bit of each other from the 1960s until the Apocalypse that wasn't. They were together so often that the humans they interacted with often mistook them for lovers--sometimes they would correct them, but more often than not, they would not. What harm was there in humans thinking what they will? With all of eternity before them, the odds of them returning to that particular restuarant in that particular town were so astronomically small they weren't even worth noting. And once they found out that the Apocalypse was nigh, well...nobody would be alive to remember them anyway. And that was a decidedly morbid thought.

And then, after everything was said done, and they were seated in Aziraphale's newly restored bookstore on the second day of the rest of their lives, Crowley was  _still_ wearing those blasted things. In fact, Aziraphale had found an entire stash of them hidden away in the smoldering remains of Crowley's beloved Bentley. And Aziraphale, feeling empowered (and perhaps, a bit braver as well) with the knowledge that Heaven was a bit too preoccupied recouping from the failed Apocalypse to take note of one stray angel, snatched the sunglasses off his face and made them disappear with a minor miracle. 

Crowley raised a brow, "Um...I was kind of wearing those." He was about to snap his fingers, too lazy to climb to his feet and retrieve a new pair, when Aziraphale stopped him.

"And now you're not." He said simply. Stooping down, he pressed a kiss to the arch of the demon's nose...Crowley went positively stiff beneath him, looking for all the world as if Aziraphale had just splashed him with holy water. "We've known each other for near six millenia, Crowley. No more hiding. At least...not here, in this space."

After several moments, the demon seemed to collect himself. A lazy half-smile spread across his face, "There's a lot of... _gray area_ in that demand there, angel. Care to be a bit more specific?"

The angel leaned in close, so close their lips were almost brushing, "No." 

And when he kissed him, the angel sliding into the demon's lap and the demon's arms winding their way around the angel's waist, Crowley found that he had all the answer he needed.

 


End file.
